Hope's End by Delia Wynne

Author:Delia Wynne [Wynne, Delia]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781499593839
Google: GfDvoAEACAAJ
Amazon: 149959383X
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2014-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

She was in the mood for oatmeal. Frances put a large pan of water on the stovetop and lit up the eye beneath it. Opening a cupboard door, she grabbed the quick oats and powdered cinnamon. An idea occurred to add to the cereal every sweet food in the house, so she reached for a box of raisins and a canister of honey-roasted peanuts.

The wall clock read 12:14. Frances could’ve just had a plain bowl of oatmeal, or- since she wasn’t even hungry- nothing at all. She opened the refrigerator crisper, retrieving bags of fresh fruit. Frances was making herself the elaborate, quirky breakfast, though, because as usual, she had nothing better to do.

The house was empty. Eugene was at work and she had more than four hours before her shift began on that Tuesday.

She began peeling the skin from a granny smith apple and pondered over her situation. Life mainly consisted of her grieving by herself over stiff drinks and burning cigarettes. Sometimes, she grabbed lunch and shopped with April and that was always fun, but it didn't happen enough. For unknown reasons, Christopher was keen on pairing male and female duos during shifts. That meant that Frances rarely worked with the female employees, and her free-time was April's work hours.

Yum. This is gonna be so good. She cubed the naked apple and began slicing strawberries. Eugene knew that she had come to enjoy drinking, but she was hiding the extent from him and everybody else. She drank her largest amounts in private: before emerging to greet one of his friends, or before a tedious shift at the store. She hid bottles of cocktails in the bedroom, her handbag, and disguised them in the refrigerator. That meant that her small container of orange juice included gin, more than half of her bottled tomato juice was actually vodka, and as she casually sipped coffee around her coworkers, she was sipping rum along with it.

Some of the spirits was from Eugene’s collection. A lot of it was cheap stuff she had bought with her own paychecks. The employees of the neighborhood liquor store never asked for her identification. They knew her as Eugene’s girlfriend and, in her opinion, probably assumed that she was of legal age.

She drank out of necessity. Leaving home had terminated her daily terror, but the depression still remained. Without proper medication, alcohol sufficed as its substitute. What was she supposed to do instead, she had asked herself many times, just drag herself around, sober but in sheer misery? That would’ve been a dumb choice that proved nothing.

The water on the stovetop began to boil and Frances stirred the oats into it. She moved on to peeling and dicing a half banana. This is all gonna be so worth it…

Cutting the fruit became more laborious, though. Despondency nagged at her, because Frances knew that her loneliness didn’t just stem from her lack of friends. She was thinking more and more about home. Despite everything, she missed her mother. She missed Nina.

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